In Myrna Giesbrecht's article, Growing Pains, she outlines how she
discover how to take the fabrics found on the Stash CD and turn them
into pattern fills to be used in CorelDRAW. She even includes the instructions
on how to do this! These same ideas can be used with Adobe Illustrator
and other graphic programs that use pattern fills

Ouch, it hurts! Deciding to maintain a website may have
been one of my best decisions but enduring the growing pains of learning new software
is, well, painful! Already this year, I've switched from WordPerfect to MS Word
and learned to develop a website using FrontPage 2000. I'm learning Adobe Acrobat
and in the process of developing patterns in PDF so they can be downloaded directly
from my website - www.press4success.com
- without the expense of packaging, shipping and handling charges and no wait
for customers. It's a great concept several sites are already using. Unfortunately
it also means learning how to use new toys.

While I've written five books
in the sewing/quilting industry, my claim to fame is patterns complete with pressing
instructions. By that I mean I provide instructions on which way to press the
seam allowance using it as a tool to quickly and easily produce well matched design
lines and flat even quilt-tops - a technique as wonderful as rotary cutting and
strip piecing once you've learned it.

That's where the pains began. To
illustrate pressing instructions, small arrows are drawn on the quilt diagram
and a back view is provided so readers can see what's happening on the flip side.
The standard quilting software can't produce those images. Up until now I've used
CorelDraw 3.0 but needed to upgrade without the expense of a full illustration
package. Corel Select is a combination of CorelDraw 7.0 and Corel PhotoPaint -
a basic draw package for a reasonable price of $99 Cdn.

Since my main goal
was to draw quilts that looked like real quilts, Corel Select was not all that
I needed. I wanted patterns and fills that looked like real fabrics you could
buy on the shelf. For that, I bought Stash, a CD of over 2000 current fabric scans.
It's amazing. I've been sitting here clicking through my virtual fabrics like
a fabricholic in a quilt shop, intrigued to see on screen the fabrics I have in
my stash. I also ordered Quilt-Pro to incorporate the virtual fabrics into my
quilt designs and publish them to the web.

Both programs have tutorials that are well worth following.
Half the pain of new software is not knowing what to do with all those options.
Though it can't answer everything, most questions are handled in the tutorial.
With sewing specific software it's not as easy but for mainstream Microsoft and
Corel products I've hired private tutors to come into the house and give me a
couple hours of instruction. They get kind of cross-eyed when I say we're going
to make a quilt but pretty soon they're having as much fun as I am.

Using
Quilt-Pro I painted blocks, flipped, rotated, set on point, added borders, calculated
yardage and printed templates for appliqué designs. I learned to use the polygram
tool and drew the Rhododendron block on the circular grid and amazed even myself.
The varieties of grids available in this package are worth the price alone. These
aren't available in CorelDraw. AND, using virtual fabrics, I've made quilts that
look like real quilts and had a ball. But, after all that fun, I had to get back
to work starting with illustrating a Sample Plan for my website so readers would
know what a pressing plan is all about.

That's when I made an amazing discovery.
I learned I could take the bitmaps from Stash and import them into CorelDraw,
make a pattern fill out of them and then use those fills to create my designs.
This meant I could create a stash of virtual fabrics as pattern fills within CorelDraw
without working back and forth between programs. Here's how it works:

In
Stash, after opening a library of fabrics:

1. Choose
a fabric by selecting it.

2. Export by clicking on File and then selecting
Export Selected Fabric.

3. In the Export Bitmap box, choose a directory
to save the bitmap to and name it before clicking save.

Click
on
for larger view

In
CorelDraw:

1. On a new page, from the File Menu select Import.

2. When the import box comes up, go to the directory where you stored the
exported bitmap, select it and click on Import.

3. The bitmap appears on
the screen. Do not resize it. Resizing affects the clarity of the pattern. Instead
zoom in on it.

Click on
for larger view

4. Click
on the Tools Menu: (see below example)

Select Create, and from the
flyout box select Pattern.

In the Create Pattern box choose full color
and click on okay. A Marquee appears.

Click
on
for larger view

5. Draw the marquee around the bitmap being careful to get the entire
pattern without any of the white background. When you release the mouse button,
the Create Pattern box appears. Click on OK.

Click
on
for larger view

6.
Choose a directory to save the pattern fill to, name it and click on save. The
fabric scan exported from Stash and then imported to CorelDraw has now become
a pattern fill and can be used to fill any drawings you create. Close the page
with the bitmap on it. There's no need to save as the bitmap has been changed
to a pattern and is still available in Stash.

Click on
for larger view

Using
the patterns is easy. For example, to illustrate the Sample Plan at my website,
I drew a basic Four-patch block, filled it with patterns created from Roberta
Horton and Benartex fabrics, developed a 4 x 6 layout, added a border and binding
and exported it to my web page and… it worked. Then I created a step-by-step pattern
so readers could actually make the Sample Plan and experience the benefits of
pressing plans.

Click on
for larger view

Wow!
From there I went on to illustrate the website further, draw a Block of the Month
and started putting together patterns for resale. . You can check it out at www.press4success.com.

Sound simple. Well now that I know what I'm doing it is but only
after the growing pains. It's been months of learning new software, program after
program. The results so far are even better than I'd anticipated but sometimes
I've felt like I'm spinning my wheels. It's taking so long to get the resale patterns
together but I'm almost there.

Without
these learning curves I couldn't have accomplished my goals. Now that I'm past
the growing pains, the potential is incredible and with a couple weeks I will
have several patterns available. One more program to go and then maybe I won't
have to upgrade for another 10 years. Yeah I know - Not Likely!

For a person who swore she'd never have a computer in her house,
I've come a long way with a business that is both home and Internet based. Learning
these new programs is nothing short of painful but it's also creative and inspiring
so I guess I'll massage that sore spot, take a painkiller if it gets too bad and
keep on growing. It's way too fun!

Myrna
Giesbrecht is an artist who writes about, teaches, and creates textile art. She
lives in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Visit her website myrnagiesbrecht.com
or email her at mhg@direct.ca